For the next few months, I am going to do a brief recap of some powerful parenting (with educational topics) books I’ve read.
Sometimes reading quotes from books helps shift my mindset on certain topics and gets me focused on what’s really important when raising children.
Book Title: Simplicity Parenting
Author:
Book Synopsis:
Today’s busier, faster society is waging an undeclared war on childhood. With too much stuff, too many choices, and too little time, children can become anxious, have trouble with friends and school, or even be diagnosed with behavioral problems. Now internationally renowned family consultant Kim John Payne helps parents reclaim for their children the space and freedom that all kids need for their attention to deepen and their individuality to flourish. Simplicity Parenting offers inspiration, ideas, and a blueprint for change:
- Streamline your home environment. Reduce the amount of toys, books, and clutter—as well as the lights, sounds, and general sensory overload.
- Establish rhythms and rituals. Discover ways to ease daily tensions, create battle-free mealtimes and bedtimes, and tell if your child is overwhelmed.
- Schedule a break in the schedule. Establish intervals of calm and connection in your child’s daily torrent of constant doing.
- Scale back on media and parental involvement. Manage your children’s “screen time” to limit the endless deluge of information and stimulation.
A manifesto for protecting the grace of childhood, Simplicity Parenting is an eloquent guide to bringing new rhythms to bear on the lifelong art of raising children.
My Review:
Less is more. If you are overwhelmed with the busyness of your day to day, this is a fantastic book to remind you of the benefits to you and your family to evaluate your situation and make changes for the better.
Top Ten Quotes:
- “Meaning hides in repetition: We do this every day or every week because it matters. We are connected by this thing we do together. We matter to one another. In the tapestry of childhood, what stands out is not the splashy, blow-out trip to Disneyland but the common threads that run throughout and repeat: the family dinners, nature walks, reading together at bedtime (with a hot water bottle at our feet on winter evenings), Saturday morning pancakes.”
- “Children need time to become themselves–through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff–with choices and pseudochoices–before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More!”
- “Rest nurtures creativity, which nurtures activity. Activity nurtures rest, which sustains creativity. Each draws from and contributes to the other.”
- “But a half hour or an hour of quiet, restful solitary time during the day is restorative at any age, and a habit worth cultivating.”
- “Most families have increased the speed of their lives and the number of their activities gradually–even unconsciously–over time. They realize that there are costs to a consistently fast-paced, hectic schedule, but they’ve adjusted. And looking around, there always seems to be another family that does everything you do, and more, managing to squeeze in skiing, or Space Camp, or French horn lessons on top of everything else. How do they do it?
They do it by never asking ‘Why?’ Why do our kids need to be busy all of the time? Why does our son, age twelve, need to explore the possibility of space travel? Why do we feel we must offer everything? Why must it all happen now? Why does tomorrow always seem a bit late? Why would we rather squeeze more things into our schedules than to see what happens over time? What happens when we stop, when we have free time?” - “After all, it’s not just what you make of your time, it’s whether you have the time to make it your own.”
- “Yet simplification is not just about taking things away. It is about making room, creating space in your life, your intentions, and your heart.”
- “Simplification establishes an unspoken emphasis on relationship.”
- “Louv offers scientific evidence for what most of us know intuitively: that time in nature is restorative, that it helps us recover from the stresses of daily life and improves our capacity to pay attention. In its complexity and sensuality, nature invites exploration, direct contact, and experience. But it also inspires a sense of awe, a glimpse of what is still “un-Googleable” … life’s mystery and magnitude.
- “Nothing we are told, nothing we read prepares us for the feelings we have as a new parent holding our baby, and knowing that we also hold their life in the balance.”
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